7 ms·

Zuckerberg Speaks Mandarin, Blows Everyone’s Mind

67 points by hjc89 12y ago

tmikaeld 12y ago
That actually IS impressive, Mandarin is very hard to learn and he should have credit for it. Though I'm sure he had a really good teacher.
Argorak 12y ago
It didn't blow my mind. He learned a language, quite some people do that, even if the language is hard and remote. Headline disproven. Edit: it is impressive, as any language skill remote from you mother tongue. But I am not a fan of superlatives, especially if they indicate that I should take part in the appreciation. FWIW: German headline on the topic: "Facebook CEO [...] impresses students". http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/web/facbeook-chef-mark-zuckerberg-spricht-chinesisch-a-998828.html http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/web/facbeook-chef-mark-zucker...
- rmc 12y ago
  Quite a lot of people don't.
  - xiaq 12y ago
    Not to say that quite a lot of CEOs don't...
  - zhaphod 12y ago
    Actually context matters here. If some one from USA/UK/France, for example, learns a new language it definitely is a surprise. May be blows the mind is not the right word. On the other hand, it is common for people from Southern India to know 4 or 5 languages and it is not surprising.
    - Argorak 12y ago
      During my time in France, most people of my age where pretty frustrated that they didn't learn foreign languages properly at school and tried to compensate. For people in international companies, learning new languages on the job is also very normal, almost all companies have programs for that.
      - ghshephard 12y ago
        The vast, vast majority of employees working for American companies, even in an international deployment, don't tend to learn more than a few dozen catch phrases (Hello, Good Bye, How are you doing, where is the toilet, take me to the airport, etc...) for the country they are deployed to - they just hope everyone will speak english to them. I'm wondering if Mark is the first Fortune 500 CEO to ever learn a different language while working as a CEO? I'm almost certain he's the first American CEO of a fortune 500 to learn mandarin while working as a CEO.
        Argorak 12y ago
        I'm sorry that I don't share a US-centric world view, being from somewhere else. "all US minds blown", I cannot judge. But I also wouldn't be surprised if there are others learning languages during being a CEO - it's a good mental training and can be practiced almost everywhere just with some notes and a smartphone. It's just nothing you often practice or speak about in public. For the people I know moving to different countries, learning the local language is usual. All my foreign employees are by the way contractually obliged to learn my local tongue (on our cost and time, obviously).
        peterfirefly 12y ago
        I wonder how good Carlos Ghosn's Japanese is? He seems to have studied it.
      - gommm 12y ago
        People under 30-35 in France now tend to learn and speak foreign languages. It wasn't the case before. The focus on learning new languages in France only really started at the end of the 90s with, for example, engineering degrees requiring some English certification to obtain and companies creating programs to train their employees in different languages.
    - Keats 12y ago
      We do learn 2 foreign languages in France during school (English + German/Spanish/Italian/whatever) so I'm not really sure why it would be a surprise to hear a french speak another language. They might suck at it though.
      - SyneRyder 12y ago
        I think it's because of a stereotype in America/Australia etc that the French are very protective of their language (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_policy_in_France http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_policy_in_France ) and would rather people learned French than "lower themselves" to using English. When I was in Paris in the mid 90s there was some sense of that. It's probably changed now - while I haven't been to France lately, in other parts of Europe when I try to practice the local language, people under 30 always tell me "Please, speak English, we understand and it is easier for both of us."
      - LunaSea 12y ago
        Because there's "learning" and learning. French people "learn" german and english but are terrible at it even after learning it for 10 years. Scandinavian people learn english and are actually fluent with a good pronunciation after a few years.
    - gambiting 12y ago
      As a European who speaks three languages fluently, meeting someone who can speak another language is certainly not surprising. However, I think we are comparing wrong things here. As my native language is Slavic in origins, I would find learning another Slavic language incredibly easy. In fact, today I can understand more than 50% of Russian or Czech without ever learning either of those languages. Having learnt English to a highly proficient level, I then had no trouble learning German to a very high level too. However, in Zuckerberg's case what he has done is incredibly impressive because he has learned a language which shares no commonalities with his own native tongue, all while being a CEO of a multi-billion dollar company. That alone makes it worthwhile news to community of geeks HN is.
  - Argorak 12y ago
    That still doesn't make any of those two outcomes mindblowing.
  - goblin89 12y ago
    But quite a lot do, and do well, too. Why don't they deserve each a headline like this? > csa[0] Speaks Mandarin, Blows Everyone’s Mind Doesn't seem to be interesting, does it. As long as you keep Zuckerberg (or Musk, or Gates, or Obama) in there, though… > <famous person> <does an unlikely thing>, Blows Everyone's Mind …anything in place of “Speaks Mandarin” works. Such canned formula headlines, and stories that primarily are newsworthy due to combination of elite persona and unexpectedness[1] just make me cringe, nice to know I'm not alone in this. [0] Another HN user also commenting on this thread [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_values https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_values
    - Argorak 12y ago
      Thanks for link [1] and the explanation. Much appreciated.
  - LunaSea 12y ago
    Come to Luxembourg where kids are required to know 3 languages by age 10 and 4 by age 13. Learning a language is not impressive in any way. The only people who's mind was blown are probably people living in large countries like the US, the UK, France ...etc.
    - gambiting 12y ago
      Do you know many kids under the age of 10 who are CEOs of multi-billion dollar companies and who still had time to learn a language that shares absolutely no commonalities with their mother tongues?
      - LunaSea 12y ago
        Well after more than 10 years living with someone that is chinese you would hope that he at least speaks the language. He's the CEO but his job is also to delegate.
- Torn 12y ago
  The current headline (for posterity: "Zuckerberg Speaks Mandarin, Blows Everyone’s Mind") is very editorialised. Hopefully it gets changed.
  - to3m 12y ago
    The headline is reproduced on HN verbatim, by policy, even when it's a sub-clickhole one...
- lucb1e 12y ago
  > It didn't blow my mind. He learned a language, quite some people do that, even if the language is hard and remote. Not sure that as a European I have a different view on things, but I very much agree with this comment.
readerrrr 12y ago
Everybody should be learning something in their free time, unfortunately watching media with the lowest common denominator( mostly daytime TV and sitcoms ) is the most prevalent and it is the worst at the same time. Youtube is becoming a replacement for that and allows and hosts really educating stuff( lectures, languages with subtitles ), but it is just too easy to switch to it from TV and keep watching crap.
chaghalibaghali 12y ago
Very impressive, Mandarin is one of the most difficult languages for native English speakers to learn: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks:Language_Learning_Difficulty_for_English_Speakers http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks:Language_Learning_Dif...
- xiaoma 12y ago
  Mandarin is the easiest of any of the Chinese languages. It only has four tones instead of seven or more, there are a wealth of language teaching materials and a lot of natively-produced media, ranging from children's books to near-hollywood scale move productions. Cantonese, on the other hand, has a decent amount of media but relatively little in terms of materials aimed at teaching foreigners. Taiwanese learners have a decent amount of local television and music to lean on if/once they reach a high level of competence, but there isn't even a standardized written language! Instead there are the following horrible options: 1) Use an essentially unworkable system of trying to apply patchy etymological research of Taiwanese going back to middle Chinese to guess which characters modern syllable could be represented by. 2)Picking characters with similar Mandarin pronunciations, using a romanized script. This has the drawback that Taiwanese has several sounds and tones that Mandarin doesn't. 3) Use a well developed and self-consistent romanization (aka our alphabet) system developed by missionaries over a century ago. This is pretty decent but there are competing romanizations. 4) Use a mishmash of characters and roman letters together. This is very common. One advantage both Cantonese and Taiwanese hold over smaller languages is that it's not too hard to find speaker communities in just about any major world city and many of those speakers are fully fluent only in that one language and find Mandarin to be a painful alternative. If you want to study an American Indian language like Blackfoot, you'll have the additional problem that every speaker of it is bilingual in English. All in all, I don't think Mandarin ranks anywhere near the most difficult option for English speakers. It's certainly harder than romance languages, but in the big scheme of things it's of medium difficulty at worst.
  - song 12y ago
    Definitely, learning Mandarin is way easier than any of the dialects. I tried to learn Teochew to communicate with my wife's family but the lack of learning materials and of romanization system similar to pinyin for Teochew makes it very difficult to learn.
sakri 12y ago
http://qz.com/285851/the-most-important-things-mark-zuckerberg-just-said-in-broken-chinese/ http://qz.com/285851/the-most-important-things-mark-zuckerbe... |But those blown away by Zuck’s Chinese chinwag might want to know that though he’s clearly memorized a lot of relevant words, those were still shoehorned into a distinctly American grammatical order. Pronunciation is also a problem: He showed a plucky disregard for the tones that Mandarin has—one tonal slip-up had him saying that Facebook boasts eleven mobile users instead of 1 billion—and his enunciation was roughly on par with the clarity possible when someone’s stepping on your face. Still, I'm impressed. Mandarin is (f'n) hard, takes balls to speak a language you don't master in front of a crowd (and subsequently all teh interwebs).
cafard 12y ago
Did his wife speak it in the home when growing up, or was she put the weekend schools I hear of ABC (American-born Chinese) kids going through? She could certainly help him if so.
csa 12y ago
Reposted from here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8496518 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8496518 A review of his Mandarin based on a close listen of the first 5 minutes of the video and listening to the rest in the background while I type this (let me know if it changes later): tl;dr - Definitely ILR 1+, probably an ILR 2. Pronunciation needs a ton of work, but that's not the only aspect that is measured when analyzing speech. The foreign policy article (linked in another comment) is overly critical, imho. Detailed: ILR LEVEL He's definitely at least an ILR 1+. He shows signs of ILR 2 characteristics (and is probably an ILR 2), but it's hard to tell if he can sustain them in a wide range of contexts. While his pronunciation needs A LOT of work, the language itself is comprehensible to a sympathetic native listener. I strongly disagree with the Foreign Policy article that says it was "terrible". I would say that it's actually kind of amazing given that he's the CEO of a huge company. I would roughly say that he is on par with a good / above average 3rd year student at a school with a really good Chinese program. The original article says 2nd year, but this would be a superstar 2nd year student who was either a heritage speaker or had spent a lot of time in China (e.g., as a homestay or study abroad). DISCOURSE STRUCTURE AND STYLE He is able to sustain the dialogue for a long time. He is able to circumlocute decently (this really opens up the ability to communicate), but I would really like to see his range of circumlocution. He is able to string together his sentences in moderately cohesive paragraphs. He does not demonstrate the ability to combine paragraphs cohesively at a high level (signs of an ILR 3), but I don't think the tasks really required it. His style of answering questions was very American -- very direct. I don't think that a Chinese speaker who has lived exclusively in China (i.e., not educated or trained in the "West") would answer the same questions similarly. In this case, I actually think that it's best for him to answer in an American way even if he could answer in a Chinese style, but that's a different and longer discussion. Early on when he tells the story of his wife and her grandmother, he really comes across as quite charming. GRAMMAR He does decently enough. There are errors, but it's not hard to understand what he is saying -- especially for a sympathetic native listener. The sample didn't really demonstrate a wide range of grammar, but the tasks didn't necessarily require a wide range. He is able to say complex sentences (i.e., two independent clauses), and he is able to speak in different timeframes (normally tenses, but Chinese tenses are not like English). This all points to a solid ILR 2, but grammar is definitely not the toughest part of Mandarin. VOCABULARY He has a decent vocabulary -- it's solid for the task. I wonder what his vocabulary is like outside of the topics of personal bio information, Facebook, and Facebook business. If he wants to get to ILR 2+ or ILR 3, he will need to work on the accuracy and diversity of his vocabulary. PRONUNCIATION This is easily his weakest point. He has a HEAVY American accent. He mispronounces a lot of words. His tones are WAY off. He seems completely unable to say English loan words in Chinese (e.g., Facebook, Google, etc.). It's actually kind of hard to listen to. That being said, I would say that it is all comprehensible to a sympathetic native listener. SUMMARY Overall, really good for someone who is not studying full time and has a very involved full time job. I wonder how much of it was practiced or rehearsed -- a lot of the questions are ones that he definitely _should_ practice (e.g., the story about why he started studying Chinese), since they are standard questions that would be asked to him and/or the Facebook CEO. Regardless, speaking in a foreign language to a large group of people is not easy, and he came across really well. RECOMMENDATIONS He can work on his pronunciation in several ways: - Listen more. Even if it's on in the background, it will help. Right now, I don't think he has a good intuitive sense when he is mispronouncing a word. - When working with a teacher, do lower level language tasks, and act like a native speaker whose voice/accent he likes. Research suggests that this lowers affective filters for pronunciation. - Work with suprasegmentals with a pronunciation program that visualize what he's saying. It can be enlightening. - Practice over pronouncing words. If he does what he perceives as a "caricature" of pronouncing the word, he will probably be closer to accurate. Other than that, listen more, read more, and I think he will become a rock-solid ILR 2 with room for growth if he wants it. That's my quick-and-dirty. I am very interested in the informed opinions of others.
sz4kerto 12y ago
He learned a language that's fundamentally different from his mother tongue. Impressive. In my home country, you can't get your graduate degree without speaking 2 languages besides your mother tongue -- and the difference between English and Hungarian is not really smaller than English vs. Mandarin.
untog 12y ago
I think that everyone saying "I know tons of people that learnt a second language, so what" are missing the point. No, in a human being it is not that exceptional. However, a billionaire like Mark Zuckerberg might be well inclined to not bother, and expect everyone around him to speak his own language. But he went out of his way to learn. No, we shouldn't give him the Nobel Peace Prize for it, but we can say "nice, good on you", and carry on our day.
reuven 12y ago
It comes down to: (1) Chinese people are blown away when a Westerner speaks Chinese, and (2) Americans are blown away by anyone who speaks Chinese. I have been taking daily Mandarin lessons for the last few months, since I'm traveling increasingly often to Beijing to teach programming classes (in English), and want to be able to communicate more easily with my students and colleagues. I'm having a super-fun time with it, and definitely feel like I'm making progress. It's slow progress, but it's something. My friends in the US and Israel seem to think I'm some kind of mutant super genius for being able to learn Chinese. I keep trying to tell them that a billion people have managed to do it, so it can't be that hard, but they are completely surprised that it's possible. Moreover, even when I say something short and simple (with an undoubtedly very strong American accent and mediocre tones), my Chinese friends and colleagues are blown away, impressed by my ability to learn the language. Zuckerberg seems to be where I hope to be in about a year or two -- namely, a with good vocabulary, decent but imperfect grammar, and a terrible accent. I can live with that. The impressive thing here is the time needed to do this. Zuckerberg is a busy guy, and taking a few hours each week to study Mandarin isn't necessarily something that you would expect him to make time for. Then again, he just got married and doesn't yet have children. Hmm, maybe I am a mutant super genius for learning Chinese while married, consulting, and with three children... Regardless, my wife took this news as proof that I'm doing the right thing. She's convinced that there will be even more people flocking to learn Mandarin, now that Zuckerberg has shown that it's possible.
- raverbashing 12y ago
  Or maybe "Americans are blown away by anyone who speaks another language?"
  - reuven 12y ago
    Yes, but I live in Israel. It's normal here to expect native English speakers to learn Hebrew to some degree. But Chinese is seen as completely impenetrable, more than any other language. People use "Chinese" to mean something they don't understand. Just two days ago, my postal carrier asked me a question about computers. (She's knows I'm in high tech.) I started to explain things, and she said, "What you're saying is Chinese to me." I said, "Actually, I'm learning Chinese," which she definitely didn't expect!
wobbleblob 12y ago
Do people find it remarkable that he is able to speak a foreign language? Most people in the world are able to converse in more than one language. Or is it remarkable that a foreigner speaks Chinese?
- Shish2k 12y ago
  "Remarkable that an American realises a world outside the USA exists at all" would be the stereotype :P (Not necessarily an accurate one; but as a European, that seems to be how the average American is viewed)
reuven 12y ago
I'm much more amazed that so many people around the world have managed to learn English at a high enough level that they can work and study in it.
gtirloni 12y ago
Is this TMZ now?
NicoJuicy 12y ago
Does anyone has some experience with this, i speak Dutch, German, English (Germanic languages) and French (Latin language). I suppose it would be easier for me to learn Spanish or another language. But would it also help me to learn Mandarin?
- sergiosgc 12y ago
  Similarity in European languages helps. I speak Portuguese natively. It means Spanish is very easy and Italian a bit more difficult, but can be both picked up "by ear" just listening to TV shows. French is the first latin language that really required formal teaching to learn. English is taught at school from an early age, so while I recognize I'd never pick it up autonomously, it is now in the area of "easy languages". Mandarin is probably so far from European languages that I can't even identify the expected learning roadblocks. P.S: kudos on speaking Dutch. Amazingly difficult language. Tough pronunciation, strange grammar (for us coming from non-germanic languages at least).
- kokey 12y ago
  You probably learned a bit of the Germanic and Latin languages from a youngish age and many of it at school and over many years. It would help you to try learning some Mandarin just to realise how hard it is to learn for a very long list of reasons.
- Isofarro 12y ago
  I learned a few languages in school: French, Afrikaans, Xhosa, South Sotho. Been learning Mandarin on my own over the past year (using Pimsleur). The main difference is the tonal system, reading it it sounds easy, but training your ear to pick it up takes time. It's hard to follow an audio when you're not picking up the nuances of the tones in context. The language structure is kinda logical, so far. I haven't reached tenses or multiple clauses yet. I found some pronunciation similar to French, for me ren (Zh: people) is similar sounding to rien (Fr: nothing)
IkmoIkmo 12y ago
Buddy of mine told me it was pretty bad, and that when the non-rehearsed questions came up he'd continue in English after a few words. Considering his wife is Chinese, I can't say this is mind-blowing. I'd downvote this as a celebrity-worship post.
ilamont 12y ago
I learned Mandarin as a young adult, living in Taiwan and taking classes for about 10 hours per week. It took about 6 months to get to the level of vocabulary that Mark is using, and another 6 months to get to the point where I could handle a job interview. Mandarin syntax is surprisingly easy, with no articles or weird things like irregular verbs or messy conjugations. The tones throw people off, and the written characters are extremely difficult to learn (for Westerners; Japanese, who have exposure to Chinese characters, do quite well at reading and writing). Fortunately, there is a Romanization/phonetic system called pinyin that makes it quite easy to get started with pronunciation and tones. Yes, Mark is speaking with a very heavy accent and needs to work on his tones. But the fact that Mark was able to get to this level without living in China (he says he’s only visited 4 times, although it sounds like he’s able to practice with family members, including his wife’s paternal grandmother) is very impressive. I think it would be fair for many Chinese citizens to ask, if the busy CEO of a major American company who seldom visits China can learn Mandarin, why do many foreign businesspeople who have lived in China for years fail to learn the language?
drakeballew 12y ago
Here's a working translation of the Q&A, if there's not one already. https://medium.com/unbabel-news/b4cb8f223df2 https://medium.com/unbabel-news/b4cb8f223df2

67 points by hjc89 12y ago

That actually IS impressive, Mandarin is very hard to learn and he should have credit for it. Though I'm sure he had a really good teacher.

Argorak 12y ago

It didn't blow my mind. He learned a language, quite some people do that, even if the language is hard and remote. Headline disproven. Edit: it is impressive, as any language skill remote from you mother tongue. But I am not a fan of superlatives, especially if they indicate that I should take part in the appreciation. FWIW: German headline on the topic: "Facebook CEO [...] impresses students". http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/web/facbeook-chef-mark-zuckerberg-spricht-chinesisch-a-998828.html http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/web/facbeook-chef-mark-zucker...

rmc 12y ago
Quite a lot of people don't.
- xiaq 12y ago
  Not to say that quite a lot of CEOs don't...
- zhaphod 12y ago
  Actually context matters here. If some one from USA/UK/France, for example, learns a new language it definitely is a surprise. May be blows the mind is not the right word. On the other hand, it is common for people from Southern India to know 4 or 5 languages and it is not surprising.
  - Argorak 12y ago
    During my time in France, most people of my age where pretty frustrated that they didn't learn foreign languages properly at school and tried to compensate. For people in international companies, learning new languages on the job is also very normal, almost all companies have programs for that.
    - ghshephard 12y ago
      The vast, vast majority of employees working for American companies, even in an international deployment, don't tend to learn more than a few dozen catch phrases (Hello, Good Bye, How are you doing, where is the toilet, take me to the airport, etc...) for the country they are deployed to - they just hope everyone will speak english to them. I'm wondering if Mark is the first Fortune 500 CEO to ever learn a different language while working as a CEO? I'm almost certain he's the first American CEO of a fortune 500 to learn mandarin while working as a CEO.
      - Argorak 12y ago
        I'm sorry that I don't share a US-centric world view, being from somewhere else. "all US minds blown", I cannot judge. But I also wouldn't be surprised if there are others learning languages during being a CEO - it's a good mental training and can be practiced almost everywhere just with some notes and a smartphone. It's just nothing you often practice or speak about in public. For the people I know moving to different countries, learning the local language is usual. All my foreign employees are by the way contractually obliged to learn my local tongue (on our cost and time, obviously).
      - peterfirefly 12y ago
        I wonder how good Carlos Ghosn's Japanese is? He seems to have studied it.
    - gommm 12y ago
      People under 30-35 in France now tend to learn and speak foreign languages. It wasn't the case before. The focus on learning new languages in France only really started at the end of the 90s with, for example, engineering degrees requiring some English certification to obtain and companies creating programs to train their employees in different languages.
  - Keats 12y ago
    We do learn 2 foreign languages in France during school (English + German/Spanish/Italian/whatever) so I'm not really sure why it would be a surprise to hear a french speak another language. They might suck at it though.
    - SyneRyder 12y ago
      I think it's because of a stereotype in America/Australia etc that the French are very protective of their language (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_policy_in_France http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_policy_in_France ) and would rather people learned French than "lower themselves" to using English. When I was in Paris in the mid 90s there was some sense of that. It's probably changed now - while I haven't been to France lately, in other parts of Europe when I try to practice the local language, people under 30 always tell me "Please, speak English, we understand and it is easier for both of us."
    - LunaSea 12y ago
      Because there's "learning" and learning. French people "learn" german and english but are terrible at it even after learning it for 10 years. Scandinavian people learn english and are actually fluent with a good pronunciation after a few years.
  - gambiting 12y ago
    As a European who speaks three languages fluently, meeting someone who can speak another language is certainly not surprising. However, I think we are comparing wrong things here. As my native language is Slavic in origins, I would find learning another Slavic language incredibly easy. In fact, today I can understand more than 50% of Russian or Czech without ever learning either of those languages. Having learnt English to a highly proficient level, I then had no trouble learning German to a very high level too. However, in Zuckerberg's case what he has done is incredibly impressive because he has learned a language which shares no commonalities with his own native tongue, all while being a CEO of a multi-billion dollar company. That alone makes it worthwhile news to community of geeks HN is.
- Argorak 12y ago
  That still doesn't make any of those two outcomes mindblowing.
- goblin89 12y ago
  But quite a lot do, and do well, too. Why don't they deserve each a headline like this? > csa[0] Speaks Mandarin, Blows Everyone’s Mind Doesn't seem to be interesting, does it. As long as you keep Zuckerberg (or Musk, or Gates, or Obama) in there, though… > <famous person> <does an unlikely thing>, Blows Everyone's Mind …anything in place of “Speaks Mandarin” works. Such canned formula headlines, and stories that primarily are newsworthy due to combination of elite persona and unexpectedness[1] just make me cringe, nice to know I'm not alone in this. [0] Another HN user also commenting on this thread [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_values https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_values
  - Argorak 12y ago
    Thanks for link [1] and the explanation. Much appreciated.
- LunaSea 12y ago
  Come to Luxembourg where kids are required to know 3 languages by age 10 and 4 by age 13. Learning a language is not impressive in any way. The only people who's mind was blown are probably people living in large countries like the US, the UK, France ...etc.
  - gambiting 12y ago
    Do you know many kids under the age of 10 who are CEOs of multi-billion dollar companies and who still had time to learn a language that shares absolutely no commonalities with their mother tongues?
    - LunaSea 12y ago
      Well after more than 10 years living with someone that is chinese you would hope that he at least speaks the language. He's the CEO but his job is also to delegate.
Torn 12y ago
The current headline (for posterity: "Zuckerberg Speaks Mandarin, Blows Everyone’s Mind") is very editorialised. Hopefully it gets changed.
- to3m 12y ago
  The headline is reproduced on HN verbatim, by policy, even when it's a sub-clickhole one...
lucb1e 12y ago
> It didn't blow my mind. He learned a language, quite some people do that, even if the language is hard and remote. Not sure that as a European I have a different view on things, but I very much agree with this comment.

readerrrr 12y ago

Everybody should be learning something in their free time, unfortunately watching media with the lowest common denominator( mostly daytime TV and sitcoms ) is the most prevalent and it is the worst at the same time. Youtube is becoming a replacement for that and allows and hosts really educating stuff( lectures, languages with subtitles ), but it is just too easy to switch to it from TV and keep watching crap.

chaghalibaghali 12y ago

Very impressive, Mandarin is one of the most difficult languages for native English speakers to learn: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks:Language_Learning_Difficulty_for_English_Speakers http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks:Language_Learning_Dif...

xiaoma 12y ago
Mandarin is the easiest of any of the Chinese languages. It only has four tones instead of seven or more, there are a wealth of language teaching materials and a lot of natively-produced media, ranging from children's books to near-hollywood scale move productions. Cantonese, on the other hand, has a decent amount of media but relatively little in terms of materials aimed at teaching foreigners. Taiwanese learners have a decent amount of local television and music to lean on if/once they reach a high level of competence, but there isn't even a standardized written language! Instead there are the following horrible options: 1) Use an essentially unworkable system of trying to apply patchy etymological research of Taiwanese going back to middle Chinese to guess which characters modern syllable could be represented by. 2)Picking characters with similar Mandarin pronunciations, using a romanized script. This has the drawback that Taiwanese has several sounds and tones that Mandarin doesn't. 3) Use a well developed and self-consistent romanization (aka our alphabet) system developed by missionaries over a century ago. This is pretty decent but there are competing romanizations. 4) Use a mishmash of characters and roman letters together. This is very common. One advantage both Cantonese and Taiwanese hold over smaller languages is that it's not too hard to find speaker communities in just about any major world city and many of those speakers are fully fluent only in that one language and find Mandarin to be a painful alternative. If you want to study an American Indian language like Blackfoot, you'll have the additional problem that every speaker of it is bilingual in English. All in all, I don't think Mandarin ranks anywhere near the most difficult option for English speakers. It's certainly harder than romance languages, but in the big scheme of things it's of medium difficulty at worst.
- song 12y ago
  Definitely, learning Mandarin is way easier than any of the dialects. I tried to learn Teochew to communicate with my wife's family but the lack of learning materials and of romanization system similar to pinyin for Teochew makes it very difficult to learn.

sakri 12y ago

http://qz.com/285851/the-most-important-things-mark-zuckerberg-just-said-in-broken-chinese/ http://qz.com/285851/the-most-important-things-mark-zuckerbe... |But those blown away by Zuck’s Chinese chinwag might want to know that though he’s clearly memorized a lot of relevant words, those were still shoehorned into a distinctly American grammatical order. Pronunciation is also a problem: He showed a plucky disregard for the tones that Mandarin has—one tonal slip-up had him saying that Facebook boasts eleven mobile users instead of 1 billion—and his enunciation was roughly on par with the clarity possible when someone’s stepping on your face. Still, I'm impressed. Mandarin is (f'n) hard, takes balls to speak a language you don't master in front of a crowd (and subsequently all teh interwebs).

cafard 12y ago

Did his wife speak it in the home when growing up, or was she put the weekend schools I hear of ABC (American-born Chinese) kids going through? She could certainly help him if so.

csa 12y ago

Reposted from here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8496518 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8496518 A review of his Mandarin based on a close listen of the first 5 minutes of the video and listening to the rest in the background while I type this (let me know if it changes later): tl;dr - Definitely ILR 1+, probably an ILR 2. Pronunciation needs a ton of work, but that's not the only aspect that is measured when analyzing speech. The foreign policy article (linked in another comment) is overly critical, imho. Detailed: ILR LEVEL He's definitely at least an ILR 1+. He shows signs of ILR 2 characteristics (and is probably an ILR 2), but it's hard to tell if he can sustain them in a wide range of contexts. While his pronunciation needs A LOT of work, the language itself is comprehensible to a sympathetic native listener. I strongly disagree with the Foreign Policy article that says it was "terrible". I would say that it's actually kind of amazing given that he's the CEO of a huge company. I would roughly say that he is on par with a good / above average 3rd year student at a school with a really good Chinese program. The original article says 2nd year, but this would be a superstar 2nd year student who was either a heritage speaker or had spent a lot of time in China (e.g., as a homestay or study abroad). DISCOURSE STRUCTURE AND STYLE He is able to sustain the dialogue for a long time. He is able to circumlocute decently (this really opens up the ability to communicate), but I would really like to see his range of circumlocution. He is able to string together his sentences in moderately cohesive paragraphs. He does not demonstrate the ability to combine paragraphs cohesively at a high level (signs of an ILR 3), but I don't think the tasks really required it. His style of answering questions was very American -- very direct. I don't think that a Chinese speaker who has lived exclusively in China (i.e., not educated or trained in the "West") would answer the same questions similarly. In this case, I actually think that it's best for him to answer in an American way even if he could answer in a Chinese style, but that's a different and longer discussion. Early on when he tells the story of his wife and her grandmother, he really comes across as quite charming. GRAMMAR He does decently enough. There are errors, but it's not hard to understand what he is saying -- especially for a sympathetic native listener. The sample didn't really demonstrate a wide range of grammar, but the tasks didn't necessarily require a wide range. He is able to say complex sentences (i.e., two independent clauses), and he is able to speak in different timeframes (normally tenses, but Chinese tenses are not like English). This all points to a solid ILR 2, but grammar is definitely not the toughest part of Mandarin. VOCABULARY He has a decent vocabulary -- it's solid for the task. I wonder what his vocabulary is like outside of the topics of personal bio information, Facebook, and Facebook business. If he wants to get to ILR 2+ or ILR 3, he will need to work on the accuracy and diversity of his vocabulary. PRONUNCIATION This is easily his weakest point. He has a HEAVY American accent. He mispronounces a lot of words. His tones are WAY off. He seems completely unable to say English loan words in Chinese (e.g., Facebook, Google, etc.). It's actually kind of hard to listen to. That being said, I would say that it is all comprehensible to a sympathetic native listener. SUMMARY Overall, really good for someone who is not studying full time and has a very involved full time job. I wonder how much of it was practiced or rehearsed -- a lot of the questions are ones that he definitely _should_ practice (e.g., the story about why he started studying Chinese), since they are standard questions that would be asked to him and/or the Facebook CEO. Regardless, speaking in a foreign language to a large group of people is not easy, and he came across really well. RECOMMENDATIONS He can work on his pronunciation in several ways: - Listen more. Even if it's on in the background, it will help. Right now, I don't think he has a good intuitive sense when he is mispronouncing a word. - When working with a teacher, do lower level language tasks, and act like a native speaker whose voice/accent he likes. Research suggests that this lowers affective filters for pronunciation. - Work with suprasegmentals with a pronunciation program that visualize what he's saying. It can be enlightening. - Practice over pronouncing words. If he does what he perceives as a "caricature" of pronouncing the word, he will probably be closer to accurate. Other than that, listen more, read more, and I think he will become a rock-solid ILR 2 with room for growth if he wants it. That's my quick-and-dirty. I am very interested in the informed opinions of others.

sz4kerto 12y ago

He learned a language that's fundamentally different from his mother tongue. Impressive. In my home country, you can't get your graduate degree without speaking 2 languages besides your mother tongue -- and the difference between English and Hungarian is not really smaller than English vs. Mandarin.

untog 12y ago

I think that everyone saying "I know tons of people that learnt a second language, so what" are missing the point. No, in a human being it is not that exceptional. However, a billionaire like Mark Zuckerberg might be well inclined to not bother, and expect everyone around him to speak his own language. But he went out of his way to learn. No, we shouldn't give him the Nobel Peace Prize for it, but we can say "nice, good on you", and carry on our day.

reuven 12y ago

It comes down to: (1) Chinese people are blown away when a Westerner speaks Chinese, and (2) Americans are blown away by anyone who speaks Chinese. I have been taking daily Mandarin lessons for the last few months, since I'm traveling increasingly often to Beijing to teach programming classes (in English), and want to be able to communicate more easily with my students and colleagues. I'm having a super-fun time with it, and definitely feel like I'm making progress. It's slow progress, but it's something. My friends in the US and Israel seem to think I'm some kind of mutant super genius for being able to learn Chinese. I keep trying to tell them that a billion people have managed to do it, so it can't be that hard, but they are completely surprised that it's possible. Moreover, even when I say something short and simple (with an undoubtedly very strong American accent and mediocre tones), my Chinese friends and colleagues are blown away, impressed by my ability to learn the language. Zuckerberg seems to be where I hope to be in about a year or two -- namely, a with good vocabulary, decent but imperfect grammar, and a terrible accent. I can live with that. The impressive thing here is the time needed to do this. Zuckerberg is a busy guy, and taking a few hours each week to study Mandarin isn't necessarily something that you would expect him to make time for. Then again, he just got married and doesn't yet have children. Hmm, maybe I am a mutant super genius for learning Chinese while married, consulting, and with three children... Regardless, my wife took this news as proof that I'm doing the right thing. She's convinced that there will be even more people flocking to learn Mandarin, now that Zuckerberg has shown that it's possible.

raverbashing 12y ago
Or maybe "Americans are blown away by anyone who speaks another language?"
- reuven 12y ago
  Yes, but I live in Israel. It's normal here to expect native English speakers to learn Hebrew to some degree. But Chinese is seen as completely impenetrable, more than any other language. People use "Chinese" to mean something they don't understand. Just two days ago, my postal carrier asked me a question about computers. (She's knows I'm in high tech.) I started to explain things, and she said, "What you're saying is Chinese to me." I said, "Actually, I'm learning Chinese," which she definitely didn't expect!

wobbleblob 12y ago

Do people find it remarkable that he is able to speak a foreign language? Most people in the world are able to converse in more than one language. Or is it remarkable that a foreigner speaks Chinese?

Shish2k 12y ago
"Remarkable that an American realises a world outside the USA exists at all" would be the stereotype :P (Not necessarily an accurate one; but as a European, that seems to be how the average American is viewed)

reuven 12y ago

I'm much more amazed that so many people around the world have managed to learn English at a high enough level that they can work and study in it.

gtirloni 12y ago

Is this TMZ now?

NicoJuicy 12y ago

Does anyone has some experience with this, i speak Dutch, German, English (Germanic languages) and French (Latin language). I suppose it would be easier for me to learn Spanish or another language. But would it also help me to learn Mandarin?

sergiosgc 12y ago
Similarity in European languages helps. I speak Portuguese natively. It means Spanish is very easy and Italian a bit more difficult, but can be both picked up "by ear" just listening to TV shows. French is the first latin language that really required formal teaching to learn. English is taught at school from an early age, so while I recognize I'd never pick it up autonomously, it is now in the area of "easy languages". Mandarin is probably so far from European languages that I can't even identify the expected learning roadblocks. P.S: kudos on speaking Dutch. Amazingly difficult language. Tough pronunciation, strange grammar (for us coming from non-germanic languages at least).
kokey 12y ago
You probably learned a bit of the Germanic and Latin languages from a youngish age and many of it at school and over many years. It would help you to try learning some Mandarin just to realise how hard it is to learn for a very long list of reasons.
Isofarro 12y ago
I learned a few languages in school: French, Afrikaans, Xhosa, South Sotho. Been learning Mandarin on my own over the past year (using Pimsleur). The main difference is the tonal system, reading it it sounds easy, but training your ear to pick it up takes time. It's hard to follow an audio when you're not picking up the nuances of the tones in context. The language structure is kinda logical, so far. I haven't reached tenses or multiple clauses yet. I found some pronunciation similar to French, for me ren (Zh: people) is similar sounding to rien (Fr: nothing)

IkmoIkmo 12y ago

Buddy of mine told me it was pretty bad, and that when the non-rehearsed questions came up he'd continue in English after a few words. Considering his wife is Chinese, I can't say this is mind-blowing. I'd downvote this as a celebrity-worship post.

ilamont 12y ago

I learned Mandarin as a young adult, living in Taiwan and taking classes for about 10 hours per week. It took about 6 months to get to the level of vocabulary that Mark is using, and another 6 months to get to the point where I could handle a job interview. Mandarin syntax is surprisingly easy, with no articles or weird things like irregular verbs or messy conjugations. The tones throw people off, and the written characters are extremely difficult to learn (for Westerners; Japanese, who have exposure to Chinese characters, do quite well at reading and writing). Fortunately, there is a Romanization/phonetic system called pinyin that makes it quite easy to get started with pronunciation and tones. Yes, Mark is speaking with a very heavy accent and needs to work on his tones. But the fact that Mark was able to get to this level without living in China (he says he’s only visited 4 times, although it sounds like he’s able to practice with family members, including his wife’s paternal grandmother) is very impressive. I think it would be fair for many Chinese citizens to ask, if the busy CEO of a major American company who seldom visits China can learn Mandarin, why do many foreign businesspeople who have lived in China for years fail to learn the language?

drakeballew 12y ago

Here's a working translation of the Q&A, if there's not one already. https://medium.com/unbabel-news/b4cb8f223df2 https://medium.com/unbabel-news/b4cb8f223df2